➤ “ Industry must try to curb cellphone thefts,” Letters, Opinion, March 17 Read More

Central to Nathan Lean’s claim that our American Freedom Defense Initiative ads spread “hate” is his charge that the ads “suggest collective guilt on the part of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims for acts of terrorism.” Yet nowhere do our ads suggest any such thing. Instead, they highlight real hatred and incitement to violence from influential Muslim leaders and spokesmen. Muslims and non-Muslims who abhor and oppose that hatred and incitement should be standing with us, not condemning us. Read More

San Franciscans are now debating how to pay for seismic upgrades to 44,000 San Francisco housing units vulnerable to collapse during an earthquake. The discussion concerns so-called soft-story buildings — structures in which multistory wooden-frame buildings sit atop garages or businesses with few internal walls. Such buildings famously collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Read More

As most people who have tried it know: Catching a cab in San Francisco is not simple. There is no centralized dispatch service and far too few taxi stands, and wildly waving one’s arm for taxis on the street is hardly useful — although often good exercise. Read More